King of Red Dunes
by Writer Awakened
Summary: FE8. Written for 'fe contest.' Joshua/Eirika.


_King of Red Dunes_

- O -

(Thanks to Amielleon for beta-reading!)

- O -

Eirika, Princess of Renais, and King Joshua V, Lord of Jehanna, Tempest King and Ruler of the White Dunes, were wed on the fifth day of the fifth month, beneath a cloudless sky on the steps of the Royal Palace of Jehanna.

Joshua's first thought upon seeing the lady of Renais that day, dressed in the traditional red gown of Jehannan noblewomen, was that even a cool, quiet lady like her would turn as hot and as alive as the desert sands as the years passed. His second thought was that she was beautiful, singularly beautiful; although by his own admission he'd met few women he didn't find lovely. He liked her short skirts, her teal hair that caught sunlight and cast it back, the way she spoke so gentle and curled her soft fingers around his when they touched. And he _adored_ her smile. His third thought was that she was not smiling.

When they came together, though, she had smiled wide, and looked deeply into his eyes while the priest of Latona had said the traditional rites of Jehanna among the sands. Her kiss had been singularly sweet despite her moment of hesitation. During the war they'd spoken—not fought closely together, but spoken, and when she learned of his heritage beneath the Jehannan sun, he had called her to drink with him and speak as equals.

_I was not her first choice,_ Joshua mused later, though he'd known that all along. One had died to protect her and another had married the Holy Princess of Rausten. _I might not have even been her third._

He was in no mind—and furthermore, found it a waste of time—to consider her other suitors, but he had heard enough from rumors to know her fantasies drew her further and further away from him. Their lovemaking, at least, was as alive as either of them could have wished. By the way her eyes fluttered as she called out his name and how she had a fondness for curling her fingers in his red hair, he wondered how she could ever be unhappy. Sometimes she fell asleep before him and he could admire her, curled by her pillow, her arms folded beneath her chin as though clutching something precious, with the smallest of sweet smiles on her face. He liked to brush her bangs from her face and kiss her on her forehead. But he most enjoyed when they drifted to sleep together, covered in the other's sweat, clinging naked and needy to one another like survivors in a dark sea, their breaths only inches apart.

The thought had occurred to him: _The greatest gamblers are said to be in bed with Lady Luck. But I'd take Eirika in a heartbeat._

Sometimes he wondered what she thought of those moments. If his arms were as romantic to her. If his kiss was enough to keep her in thrall. If his words ever touched her like hers often did him. If she could love him like he'd grown to love her. He played "does-she-or-does-she-not" with his two-crowned coin, like a child who never wants to lose, and it told him the answer: She does, she does, she does, she does.

_And Lady Luck never lies._

- O -

The members of the court seeking the king and queen's audience asked for many things, and King Joshua heard but he was not listening. That morning, before his queen had even woken, had brought the captain of the Redblades, who brought tidings for his king's eyes and ears alone.

"Your Majesty. As the Baron of Beya left the city walls yesterday, his slaves outside the limits revolted against him," the captain said, wasting no words. Under his arms, he held a small, locked box. "This morning a city patrol found the bodies of five slaves buried beneath the sands. One of them was a young woman. You—must needs see this, sire."

The captain unlocked his box and spilled its contents on the carpet before the throne. The first thing Joshua saw was eyes. Dead, empty eyes. By her face and her long, gold hair, she must have been no older than the queen, Joshua figured. It looked as though she'd not had a clean beheading either. It was all he could do not to retch at the foot of his seat.

"Thank you," he mumbled, averting his eyes from both the head and his captain. "You may leave. And get that from my sight, please."

Long after the captain took his leave and with him the woman's head, the sight remained in the king's mind, clutched hold and would not relinquish its grip.

When the many petitioners and lesser lords left the throne room, the king had time to continue a discussion he'd started long ago, when he had married his queen six months before.

"Before, the palace harem was made up of slave girls—and sometimes boys, depending. My great-grandfather Shaeheris put an end to the trade of 'palace folk' and freed all the slaves in the palace and the capital." The pride on the king of Jehanna's face was apparent. King Shaeheris was a noble man, a great swordsman, a good king—and no one spoke of him. "He'd have put an end to the slave trade entirely, but if he did the slavers and the nobles with their coffers of slave-gold would have revolted. It would have meant open war between the palace and the people...and blood on the sands. He wasn't willing to make that sacrifice. He made threats and tried to convince them to break the chains of their own accord, but to a man they all refused." Joshua pursed his lips.

"It is a difficult thing, to rule completely with your heart," said Eirika, nodding slowly. She shifted in her seat. Her goblet of chilled wine sat empty on the arm, and she did not ask for another. "I'm convinced it is not possible."

_You're a woman for whom nothing is impossible, _Joshua thought, remembering her strength during and after the war._ Beautiful, and wise, and strong, and kind. And besides, 'impossible' is a word for weak men without a lot of luck on their side._

"Most of the old kings pretended they never saw it. It's easier to worry about something you can't see. When someone says the words to you, and tells you the stories, you can always put it aside as rumor, hearsay, or even lies. But your eyes can never deceive you. Once you've seen the chains and the blood and the vomit and the sweat, those sights become like a bad itch—they keep on returning, and returning, and never stop coming back."

_And the eyes. The dark eyes._

Joshua closed his own eyes and clenched his brow. "Maybe most of the dancing girls and the pit fighters and the stoneworkers out there are treated humanely, true. But what about the rest? Should I ignore the mistreated because they don't number _too_ many?"

"I've not seen any people in chains at all, for as long as I've been here. What caused this anger?"

_Blood. _Joshua wanted to spare his wife the sight, as he wished he himself had been spared.

"The Sand Barons are rather good at hiding their chattel, I'll give them that," said Joshua. His finger tapped in a locomotion on the side of his throne. His was the seat for the ruling sovereign, and the one beside for his or her spouse. Before this had been his mother's seat, and he wondered if it had been too large for her as it was for him. "Like in Grado, they work only on the fringes of Jehanna. But they're there. And their hands speak louder than their words ever could. They're not just slaveholders—they're tyrants and traffickers in the clothes of taskmasters. Your br—King Ephraim ordered all the criminals holding slaves who had come to help rebuild to release their shackles or he'd have them drawn and quartered. They'd no choice but to listen to him."

"I detest the practice as much as you. Even a world without war is not entirely a happy one," Eirika said. "But what is there to do? What can you hope to accomplish, when by your own admission they number so many?"

"To gamble everything on a perfect world...I'm sure someone's had the dice and the coin to risk it all on something they believed in. It was a great gamble to fight the Demon King, and the ivory fell our way that time."

"What are you saying?" The urgency in her voice spoke to Joshua, but not in the way she might have liked, he reckoned.

_I must dare to do what Mother could not. Mother died with business unfinished. One day she would have done what I must do now, I'm sure of it. Eirika, please, understand!_

"I'm saying it's not always easy to sleep at night knowing somewhere some innocent man is being worked until the skin on his hands is gone. That there is a boy made to watch his family disappear before his eyes. That there is a girl somewhere being deflowered against her will and left for dead. That this could be happening every day somewhere in my country—how could I expect to be forgiven by anyone for abiding that?"

"I—I _understand_ how you feel, Joshua. And my brother felt the same, yes. But this—" Eirika could not look him in the eye. "Even so—but if what you say about their reach is true, if you were to move against the slaveholders, your—_our_ country would—it's too reckless. Far too reckless..."

"It makes you afraid, doesn't it?" He tried to smile reassuringly.

"It should make you afraid as well!" Eirika said. "It is not so easy as you say. You—you are taking arms against their way of life. They would not welcome you with open arms."

She already cast off her silk cloak, and from the way she shifted in her seat, Joshua could only imagine she would rather cast off the rest of her clothes as well. The king reached over and wiped a sheet of sweat from his queen's forehead, and took her hand.

"I do not expect them to. I don't expect it to be an easy task. In fact, it might well be the greatest challenge I've ever known. But should it come to it, I am willing to fight for what I believe in. This is what my countrymen _deserve_, Eirika. I won't back down now. I can't."

Eirika stood up and shook her head and spared a single glance at her husband. The princess of Renais had been somber on their wedding day, and there were days she seemed not to smile at all, but he had never seen her despairing so.

"And do you think that I have never fought for what I believed in? I have fought for so long, and it has amounted to—to...I am through with war!"

She left the room without another glance, and Joshua could not find the strength to follow her.

- O -

In the armory of the Palace Guard, King Joshua found Marisa, examining the swords hanging side by side on the wall. It was a dark place, and the torches cast long shadows on the steel.

"Marisa," he said, and the woman jumped. "Heh, sorry to startle you. How do you fare today?"

"Well," she said simply. "I was looking at the swords. I still prefer a silver sword, but I used to use a shamshir. I would use a talwar but I'm not sure how skilled I would be with it in the off-hand. And I would try a khanda, but they're too heavy."

Joshua chuckled. She was so very different from his queen, in more ways than her manner of speech.

"Oh," Marisa said, and turned around. "You probably don't care. Sorry."

"No, no, it's all right. It's just—been a while since I've fought for real."

"Do you still prefer a western killing sword?"

"Against a man in mail or leather, yes. Against plate, I'd take a silver sword...or anything heavy enough to bash their skull in."

"Oh," said Marisa. She looked away briefly, then, "There's a sword for everyone, isn't there? Anyone can fight if they train hard enough. And use the right sword."

"That's true. There's a reason I promoted you to the Redblades." The Redblades was what the king called his elite guard, members of the palace guard that proved themselves superior to all others. He would have promoted her to captain of the Redblades, but she'd asked not to be put in a position of leadership, and he'd obliged.

King Joshua turned on his heels, his leather boots clomping against the sandstone floor. "Marisa, walk with me."

He turned the corner out of the armory and his guardswoman followed close behind.

"Where are we going, King?"

"To the western balcony on the highest floor."

For a moment they walked in silence, following the halls to the great winding stair that led through the heart of the palace and up to the fifth floor, where the most esteemed lords and guests made their quarters.

"I'm uncomfortable here," Marisa said suddenly as they passed through the halls, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"Hm? Uncomfortable?" Joshua stopped.

"Sometimes I don't feel comfortable here."

"Have any of the men in the palace treated you discourteously?" he whispered.

"Huh?" Marisa tilted her head. "I haven't got any titles to be called courteously. I'm just "Swordswoman Marisa' or 'Crimson'."

Joshua managed a small smile. "I'll take that to mean they've not mistreated you."

"You mean have they tried to rape me?" Marisa said, understanding. "No, no, of course not. They're not stupid."

"Of course," Joshua said. "Then why are you discomforted? I would rather you not have to be at unease in my castle among the sands." They reached the balcony and the king swept his hand out at the distant sunset.

"Because—I don't _belong_ here," Marisa said, her voice raising seemingly against her command. Joshua gently urged her to quiet. "I don't belong here," she repeated, in nearly a whisper. "I don't have much to do, and the others bother me."

"You shouldn't listen to them."

"I don't." She shifted from foot to foot anxiously.

Marisa said little about herself, and even less about where she had come from. Joshua knew she was born and raised as a mercenary in Jehanna, and nothing more.

"What were things like back home? You're from the south, aren't you?"

The swordswoman regarded him strangely. "Yes."

"So, what were things like there?"

"I fought a lot. Mostly I sparred with my father. But people where I used to live found fault and ridicule in everything I did except fighting. That was all that mattered to them."

"I see." Joshua felt a touch of sadness for her. She'd never had an ordinary life, and she would never have one here. But then again, neither did he.

"I don't even fight anymore now. Even the way I stand sits ill with these people here, and the way I talk...I think they revile me. And they don't like how I fight 'sinister.' I can fight with my right hand passable well, but they don't care about that."

_What they might think of you is no problem of yours, _Joshua almost said, though he knew it would do little good to tell her.

"Above all others, I trust you, Marisa," Joshua said, and placed a hand on her shoulder. She flinched almost imperceptibly before relaxing. "And I'm sure you won't let me down. I've an important mission to do. At dawn seven days from now I'll make a declaration, one that won't be welcomed with open ears."

"What do you need me to do?"

"I am going to tell all of Jehanna—no, all of Magvel—that from this day forward enslaving another human being is a crime in the Kingdom of the White Dunes as it is elsewhere in Magvel. That they must forthwith break every single chain of every single man, woman, and child in bondage. That former owners of slaves may re-purchase their services for the wages of no less than a hundred gold a day, one proper meal, and the promise of humane treatment. And if they do not agree..." _And they will not. _"We will move."

"That seems fair," Marisa agreed. "I was lucky. My father and I were never caught by the Sand Barons. Once a few men came for us to take us to the pits. My father killed five of them and I killed the sixth after he'd surrendered. He would not have shown me any mercy, Father said, so why should I show him any?"

The king took a step back and looked closely at the woman called the Crimson Flash. She was admirable in a different way than his beloved, and her eyes showed no sense of fear or even apprehension. Eirika was strong, but she would not abide any road that lead to only war.

_I can't please everyone. There will be people who will scream vengeance for those lives taken, and why should I disagree? This is greater than Eirika and I...much greater._

"Marisa...thank you. I'm counting on you."

"I'm looking forward to it."

_She is a Jehannan through and through. Fire at the surface, ice deep within, _Joshua thought after he'd bid Marisa farewell.

- O -

As he'd expected, a week after his declaration, the whispers had begun. He had sent riders to the north and to the south to bring news on what the Sand Barons and Earls and Counts who kept human property had to say for themselves. Only a quarter of his riders had returned, and the others spoke of broken chains...wrapped around starving slaves' necks. That was all the answer King Joshua had needed. He'd sent three heavily armed hosts south, spearheaded by the elite men (and one supremely skilled woman) of the Redblades. He had wanted to go himself, to show the beasts and brutes in the sands that he was not afraid of them. But it was Marisa, of all people, who had convinced him to stay, that he was too important to die.

_No one is too important to die for their beliefs, _he had thought, but he stayed his tongue. He seemed to find himself doing that often. Still, if the Sand Barons' armies of sellswords, slaves (how sad, Joshua thought, that so many slaves would be forced to fight for their own bondage) and noble pricks came to storm the castle, he would be standing on the steps, the first to raise his blade against them.

Now he sat up in bed naked, with his bed sheet leaving his chest bare, warm with sweat and dark from the many scars of the war. Beside him his wife sat in her nightgown, reading a book of Jehannan faerie-tales. He watched her closely, in wonder at how she could read a page in ten seconds and move to the next—and how well she remembered all of the stories, all of the classic fables and allegories popular in his homeland. She shared many stories from Renais as well, of dragons and lords and the Knights of the North, tales of chivalry and courtly love that seemed far more modern—and far more alien—than the stories the king had grown up on.

_ Tales of swords, dancers, and thieves. Tales of impenetrable fortresses and mighty lords who foolishly thought they could topple them._

Eirika talked about her own life, her own home as well, although it was plain to Joshua that thinking about her past, about the days before the war, disquieted her more than anything, and as the months passed he became loath to dredge up the halcyon memories.

Right then he could not care any less of stories or rumors or what failings the old Jehannans might have had. Joshua gently reached over and stroked Queen Eirika on her cheek, down to her chin, and she blushed.

"My brother used to do that," she whispered, as if there were someone else in their chambers and she desperately wanted no one to hear. The book had fallen in her lap.

"I can do it again, if you'd like."

"N-No," Eirika said. "Please, do not."

Until then, King Joshua had not noticed how lean his wife had become and how pale her face was. Some of the palace nobles and guardsmen had japed about her complexion behind her back, of how her bones must be so white as to be made of crystal. They thought the king hadn't heard, but he did.

Joshua held his tongue then, though he'd wished he could toss those ungrateful idiots in the dungeon, and he'd held his tongue every night when he and Eirika supped, when she seemed to find no stomach for anything his chefs prepared for her. When he believed the spices did her wrong he had the cooks prepare a more familiar meal of roast capon and mutton, but even then she'd found little appetite.

_But she is beautiful_, thought Joshua. _Any man's treasure_. He loved the way she looked in silks, how they cascaded down her waist and her hips, how her skirts swooshed across the floor hypnotically when she walked. He loved the way she looked when she shed her robes and bared her breasts, the way she smelled of sweat and perfumes and spice, the way she held onto him with her nails painted the faintest water-blue and wouldn't let him go until she found her peak and fell back against the sheets. There were days he closed his eyes and she came to him. There were days when she would not leave him, and her wide smile, lips red like the fire beneath the desert sands, walked with him, everywhere, everywhere, _everywhere_.

"Eirika, should we..." His hand slipped slowly down her shoulder, fingers tugging at her with want.

"I'm sorry." It was all she could say. He could barely contain himself from tearing her nightgown to shreds and laying her open before him. He had the grace at least to sit back, fold his hands, and ask quietly if she was well.

"I worry for you," she answered. "Every day, I pray for you, to see if Latona will listen. I hope against hoping that everything will work out for the better, I really do. But there—there is only so much I can accomplish here."

_ I'm sorry, too,_ Joshua thought. He would have said as much, but he could not. He had no wine to wet his palate and loosen his tongue. With enough drink he might have apologized for everything, for the old brutish lords who still lived in the seven-hundred-years-before, for all the people who'd called her stranger and whore, for all the things he had done wrong and all the things he could not do.

Sober, he covered her hands softly with his and implored her to look at him. When he stared deeply into her eyes, he saw the headless woman staring hollow back at him, and he wanted to scream until the picture faded away. "Stay with me, Eirika. You might not need me, but I need you. I can't do this alone. I—just _can't_. So please, stay with me. Just a little longer. Soon this will all be over, and we'll be marveling at our good luck."

She found a kiss for him and he held her, arms gently cradling her shoulders.

"I won't leave you, Joshua. So long as you need me, I'll stay."

_And if I need you forever? Would you stay forever? _Could_ you stay forever?_

He didn't ask her that.


End file.
